As this type of gas circuit breaker, for example, Patent Literature 1 discloses a gas circuit breaker including, in a container filled with insulation gas, a thermal puffer chamber provided on an outer circumference of a movable side contact among arc contacts (hereinafter, also referred to as “movable arc contact”) and a mechanical puffer chamber provided adjacent to the thermal puffer chamber in an axial direction.
This gas circuit breaker is configured such that insulation gas is heated and pressurized by arc energy and accumulated in the thermal puffer chamber at the time of current cutoff, and high-pressure insulation gas is discharged to an arc to cut the current off at around a current zero point, while the high-pressure insulation gas in the mechanical puffer chamber is discharged to an arc generation area by way of the thermal puffer chamber to recover insulation performance of the gas circuit breaker.
Furthermore, Patent Literature 2 discloses a gas circuit breaker including, in a container filled with insulation gas, a thermal puffer chamber provided on an outer circumference of a movable side contact among arc contacts (hereinafter, also referred to as “movable arc contact”) and a plurality of mechanical puffer chambers having a cylindrical shape which are provided on an outer circumference of the thermal puffer chamber.